Video: Quick wrinkle reduction with the Patch tool

In the previous movies, we gained some valuable techniques and tips that we can use in order to reduce and remove wrinkles. Yet all of those techniques required a lot of time. What about those situations where you just don't have a lot of time? Well, here that's what I want to focus in on. So let's go ahead and zoom in on the image and then let's reposition the photograph so we can focus in on the face. And in this movie, I want to share with you a technique which will involve using the Patch tool and also a fade shortcut in order to reduce wrinkles.

In this course, photographer, author, and teacher Chris Orwig details the tools every photographer needs to retouch portraits to make them look their best while remaining authentic. The course includes an overview of the retouching process and how to develop a plan for a retouching project.

After exploring techniques to improve the overall photo, Chris shares his techniques for reducing wrinkles, enhancing eyes and other facial features, improving hair, and retouching makeup. The course concludes with a look at retouching skin and reshaping portions of a portrait using transformations, the Warp tool, and the Liquify filter.

Quick wrinkle reduction with the Patch tool

In the previous movies, we gained some valuable techniques and tips that we canuse in order to reduce and remove wrinkles.Yet all of those techniques required a lot of time.What about those situations where you just don't have a lot of time?Well, here that's what I want to focus in on.So let's go ahead and zoom in on the image and then let's reposition thephotograph so we can focus in on the face.And in this movie, I want to share with you a technique which will involve usingthe Patch tool and also a fade shortcut in order to reduce wrinkles.

This technique works on all sorts of images;color, black, and white, subjects that are young or old.And the way that you use this technique is you first duplicate your background layer.Press Command+J on a Mac or Ctrl+J on Windows to do that, and let's namethis new layer wrinkles.Next, we're going to go ahead and select the Patch tool.You can choose that by pressing the J key and then by pressing Shift+J untilyou get to the Patch icon here, or you can click and hold and then just select the tool.Next, we want to choose a Patch option of Normal and then also Source.

Well, here how this works is we're going to make a selection around a wrinkle.What you'll need to do is make that selection, you want to make the selectionpretty close to the area that you want to remove.In other words, it's a selection that helps us focus in on the area that we want to correct.And then once we have that, we're going to click and drag this to a new part of our image.In doing that, it will then patch out that area.Yet if we zoom in a little bit more closely, we're going to see that this justlooks kind of unnatural.Well, immediately after we've done this patchwork, what we can do is we can goto the Edit menu or we can press the shortcut to open up our Fade dialog to fadewhat we've just done.

This works with other tools as well; yet here we'll focus how we can do thiswith the Patch tool.So when you go to the Edit menu, you can see that it now reads Fade Patch Selection.Let's click on that and here you can see that Fade dialog and now I can decreasethat Patch amount and then click OK in order to apply that.Next, we'll go ahead and make another selection around another area of ourimage, click and drag, and then this time rather than going to that menu, let'suse the shortcut in order to open up that Fade dialog.

The shortcut is Shift+Command+F on a Mac, Shift+Ctrl+F on Windows.To be really quick with this technique, you just have to know that shortcut,so jot that one down.And then once again, we'll go ahead and fade this back and then click OK.We can work on other areas of the face as well.I'll work on the wrinkles on this area of the image and then click and dragdown, and then again, press Shift+Command +F or Shift+Ctrl+F and then we can fadethat back, and then click OK.As you start to work on the wrinkles, one of the things that you'll discover isthat the marching ants which show you the area which you've selected;in this case, this wrinkle here, well, it's going to be a little bit distracting.

Once I apply the patch healing here, I can't really see my edges.Well, there is a nice shortcut that you can use which allows you to hide the edges.That's Command+H on a Mac or Ctrl+H on Windows.Now that doesn't remove the selection; rather it just hides those edges.So that now with those edges hidden, I can then press Shift+Command+F orShift+Ctrl+F and then I can decrease my opacity.In this way, I can kind of see this without the marching ants distracting me.All right, next click OK.

Then to turn back on the visibility of the marching ants, just press Command+Hon a Mac or Ctrl+H on Windows.Next we'd go ahead and make another selection and here we're going to make aselection in this part of our image.And as we do this, we'll press that shortcut again to open up the Fade dialog,Shift+Command+F or Shift+Ctrl+F.In doing this, you can start to see how we canslowly reduce or remove these wrinkles.And as we do this, you also want to think about how you want to do this at alevel that's higher than you're comfortable with, because by doing that you canthen have extra flexibility when it comes to changing the opacity of this layer.

It's always a little bit better to do more rather than less because if you doless, you then have to go back and do more patching.Well, here we don't have to because we've done quite a bit.We can then control the amount with our opacity slider, and here I'll bring thisup so that I can reduce those wrinkles in a way that looks realistic and nice. All right!Well, now that we see that, we can click on this Eye icon.There is our before and now here is our after of using this speed technique forreducing or removing wrinkles, which involves using the Patch tool on aduplicate layer and also fading all of those patch selections so that ourretouching looks its best.

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